Posts tagged ‘bio technology’

“The DIY BioPrinter Hack Lets You Print Biomaterials From an Old Inkjetby Morgana Matus, 01/25/13filed under: biomimicry, green gadgets, green technology, Interactive ObjectsShare on TumblrEmailWith large companies such as Organovo and Autodesk teaming up to fabricate living tissue, you might think that bioprinting is out of the scope of the average DIYer. But when it comes to technology, human ingenuity is an incredible thing, and just because you don’t own an expensive piece of a equipment doesn’t mean you can join the organic 3D-printing revolution. Thanks to a modification by Instructables member Patrik, an old abandoned HP5150 inkjet printer can be transformed into a DIY bioprinter.”

…”Scientists from Dow AgroSciences and the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory have reported engineering a plant that produces compounds that could potentially be used to make plastics.

In theory, plants could be the ultimate ‘green’ factories, engineered to pump out the kinds of raw materials now obtained from petroleum-based chemicals, according to the researchers. In reality, getting plants to accumulate high levels of thee desired products has proved elusive – until now.

“We’ve engineered a new metabolic pathway in plants for producing a kind of fatty acid that could be used as a source of precursors to chemical building blocks for making plastics such as polyethylene,” said Brookhaven biochemist John Shanklin, who led the research.”….